Robert Louis Wilken is the William R. Kenan Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Virginia. He has written numerous works including The Christians as the Romans Saw Them and The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought. In this particular work, Wilken set out to narrate the development of early Christian thought in the first centuries of the church with specific intentions to show how the Christian intellectual tradition came about, or as the author puts it, “how Christians thought about the things they believed (xiv).” At the outset, the author established a framework in which his work, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, should be understood. He gave a few preliminary comments to this end.
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According to Wilken, the greatest contribution of Basil was his interaction with the creation account in Genesis 1-3. If the author’s intention was to narrate and highlight the process and context in which Christian thinking developed, then this section on Basil’s doctrine of creation is a crystal clear example of how formative his work was. Wilken pointed out that it is through Basil that both the early church and modern church see God intentionally creating out of nothing through the Holy Spirit. Following Basil’s death, his younger brother Gregory took Basil’s foundational work to their logical conclusion, due to the more exploratory and speculative nature of his thinking. It is from this brotherly interaction that many modern day Christians have inherited their belief in a literal seven-day …show more content…
Just like early Christians thinkers, I have greatly benefitted from fitting my beliefs and convictions inside the context of the church’s worship. This has been where “the rubber meets the road” for me. Here, I have been a part of asking, “How do we biblically worship the triune God and not just God the father?” or “what place does the Lord’s Supper have in our order of service and why?” or even, “why are we singing the songs we are singing; what god are we really worshipping?” As I examined the pages of Wilken’s text, I found that my struggle to approach church services and worship gatherings biblically was shared; the earliest thinkers of the church wrestled with some of the same questions. Just as I have determined some of my theological positions, such as my stance on church discipline, I did so as I examined what it would look like in the context of my community and its worship of God. I pray that as I move forward in my current role ministering to youth, that the Lord would continue to humble me under the task of creating a biblical framework for Christian Worship to take place and would continually point my eyes back to the early church and their enduring
According to Wilken, the greatest contribution of Basil was his interaction with the creation account in Genesis 1-3. If the author’s intention was to narrate and highlight the process and context in which Christian thinking developed, then this section on Basil’s doctrine of creation is a crystal clear example of how formative his work was. Wilken pointed out that it is through Basil that both the early church and modern church see God intentionally creating out of nothing through the Holy Spirit. Following Basil’s death, his younger brother Gregory took Basil’s foundational work to their logical conclusion, due to the more exploratory and speculative nature of his thinking. It is from this brotherly interaction that many modern day Christians have inherited their belief in a literal seven-day …show more content…
Just like early Christians thinkers, I have greatly benefitted from fitting my beliefs and convictions inside the context of the church’s worship. This has been where “the rubber meets the road” for me. Here, I have been a part of asking, “How do we biblically worship the triune God and not just God the father?” or “what place does the Lord’s Supper have in our order of service and why?” or even, “why are we singing the songs we are singing; what god are we really worshipping?” As I examined the pages of Wilken’s text, I found that my struggle to approach church services and worship gatherings biblically was shared; the earliest thinkers of the church wrestled with some of the same questions. Just as I have determined some of my theological positions, such as my stance on church discipline, I did so as I examined what it would look like in the context of my community and its worship of God. I pray that as I move forward in my current role ministering to youth, that the Lord would continue to humble me under the task of creating a biblical framework for Christian Worship to take place and would continually point my eyes back to the early church and their enduring